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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26486461">Drowning in Slow Motion</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polyhexian/pseuds/Polyhexian'>Polyhexian</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Humanformers: The Music AU [22]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AU, Depression, Humanformers, M/M, POV Second Person, Suicidal Ideation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 11:02:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,948</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26486461</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polyhexian/pseuds/Polyhexian</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Rewind's in the hospital and Chromedome knows it's over.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Chromedome/Rewind (Transformers)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Humanformers: The Music AU [22]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1859230</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Drowning in Slow Motion</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It starts the way you knew it would: with an ending.</p><p>Everything happens in waves, like the river you watched below your feet, once. Not quite separately but not quite at once. You stand neck deep in the sea of time while scenes move around you but you don't move with them, and you wait for the tide to rise above your head and let you finally stop.</p><p>You go to the hospital first. They don't let you ride in the ambulance with him, and that's probably fair. You're terrified he'll die before you see him again, but he doesn't. Strangers make you sit for x-rays and wrap your arm in a cast while Rewind is alone in an operating theatre somewhere else. It's hours before they let you sit in the waiting room upstairs and before they do, two police officers speak to you and you tell them the truth and wait for them to arrest you for something, but they don't. You tell a cop you bought cocaine from the man that robbed you and he doesn't even seem to care. They leave you alone and no one holds you responsible for the things that you've done.</p><p>You aren't the only one in the waiting room. There's strangers sitting scattered around the florescent-lit windowless room, leaning forward on their knees and staring silently at the linoleum tiled floor, just like you. You don't know if you've ever felt closer to another human being before than you do to these people you don't even know, waiting with fevered breaths to find out if their lives are over yet or not.</p><p>When you were younger you used to imagine yourself on the other side of these doors. You knew even when you were little you were going to be a doctor- your parents made sure of it. You had the pedigree, the opportunities, and you were going to be someone with influence. A judge, a lawyer, a surgeon. You were so excited, imagining yourself as a brain surgeon, saving lives and making your parents proud of you.</p><p>And now you're waiting on the other side to find out if your stupid, idiot decisions have killed the man you love. Your stupid, idiot decisions have ruined everything else. You've lost your education, your family, your future, and all that remains is him, and you've ruined him too. </p><p>Eventually they let you see him again in the ICU but they don't give you especially good news. He's in a medically induced coma and covered in tubes and wires and you barely recognize him. On some level you know the words they say to you, things you read once in a textbook but now they seem strange and foreign and unreal. </p><p>It's the middle of the night though and the nurse tells you that you can't stay because you aren't family. She asks if you know his insurance and you don't, but you tell her you will find it and bring it back. </p><p>You go home. </p><p>The whole house is wrecked. Furniture tipped over, things scattered and broken. There's blood on the kitchen floor. </p><p>You know Rewind keeps his important paperwork in a fireproof box under the bed, and you drag it out to find it needs a key. For a moment you think you won't be able open it, but you find the key in his underwear drawer. He's very predictable. </p><p>You sit in the floor and hold the lockbox while you call his home insurance and they tell you to take photos of the damage and make a list of what's missing. You call his health insurance and let them know what's going on and they tell you to give his policy number to the nurse at the hospital. You know he has a family, you know he has siblings and a dad but he doesn't like talking about them and you've never seen him talk to them. You wonder if his relationship with his family is like yours, and you don't try to call them.</p><p>It's almost noon when you think to check your phone. </p><p>You have a lot of messages. From Brainstorm, from Tailgate, from Rewind's influencer friends you barely even know. You're not even sure how all of them got your number. You can see the red numbers over your Twitter and your Instagram and you know better than to check them but you do anyway. </p><p>The break-in is on the news already. Your feed is full of uncomfortable satellite photos of your house from google maps and your mugshot from the first time you got arrested for possession. The more you scroll, the more you see. You don't know how people found out about this already, but they have. Part of you wants to just delete your accounts and hide in bed but Rewind lives on his reputation and you need to damage control. You need to try to save this. You wish he was here because he always knows how to spin things.</p><p>You post an update on Twitter that Rewind is in the hospital and you know he would appreciate prayers for now. You don't know what else to say so you turn off your phone and hide it under the sink. </p><p>You finish taking photos around the house and writing down everything that you think is missing and then you pick the kitchen table up and leave the list and camera on it. You sit down on the floor where the blood has congealed on the tile, and you cross your legs and bend forward so far your head is in your lap and you cover it with your arms and you <em> cry</em>.</p><p>You're pathetic. You have no right to feel sorry for yourself. You have no right to feel frightened and sad when everything was your fault in the first place. You did this and now Rewind is in the hospital and he doesn't feel <em> anything </em> anymore because he's in a coma. He's in a coma and you put him there. </p><p>You sob until you're empty, hollowed out with a spoon, every inch of you that might have one day been good tainted and turned into black ichor, opening up your ugly insides to reveal the truth that's always been there. </p><p>You get up and go back to the hospital. </p><p>Time moves by through a cacophony of ticking and beeping and all the noises made by tubes and oxygen masks and the man-made machines but not the man himself. Visitor hours last a quarter of the day but it feels like just seconds somehow. You sit in silence next to his bed and you hope he will wake up and tell you how much he hates you if only to see him awake, but he doesn't. </p><p>You go home. </p><p>You haven't slept since before the break-in. You can feel the post-coke-high itch along the back of your neck, a migraine thrumming behind your eye sockets and cotton around your ears from exhaustion. The world feels too heavy and too soft, sick and melting. </p><p>The sun sets and leaves you once more in darkness. You are alone in a home that you know you are no longer welcome in and you go to your bedroom and you stare at the bed and you know you can't sleep there. You don't have the right. You don't belong here. You have to leave, but not yet. </p><p>You take one of his shirts from the hamper and bring it with you downstairs to clutch it against your face and sleep on the couch and pretend in the hazy half-sleep moments where your consciousness ends that you'll ever hold him again. </p><p>You wake up twelve hours later and you don't feel at all rested. When you walk downstairs you can hear your phone buzzing under the sink like a tell tale heart, beckoning you bury yourself with your sins. You aren't done yet.</p><p>You start with the blood. </p><p>Dish gloves first, then one cup bleach to nine cups water. You scrub the floor on your hands and knees, measured and methodical, one-handed. You scrub his blood from the grout until it's pink and your head feels light and then you move on to the rest of the house. There's glass to sweep up, debris to vacuum, furniture to turn over, broken electronics to dispose of. You talk to his insurance again, answering questions as you're asked and making sure everything is in order. You go through the motions and the water rises up to your ears.</p><p>When the house is presentable again you give up and take your phone back out. </p><p>Your timeline is plastered in your mugshot and thumbnails for videos with titles like "<em>Is Rewind's Coked Out Boyfriend Abusing Him?</em>" and "<em>This Man Needs To Be Arrested: A Deep Dive Into Chromedome</em>." You read them in silence and then check your actual phone messages again until you find the last message from Brainstorm. <em> Seriously, CD. Tell him. </em></p><p>You turn your phone off. </p><p>You aren't sure but you think days pass like that. Sleep, clean, call insurance, sit with Rewind, wait for the world to end. The house is spotless and your belly burns with hunger but you aren't done. You know what's coming and you won't fight it. You did this to yourself and you won't do any more to him. He's been kind enough to love you this long and you won't repay that by making him regret it any more than he already does. </p><p>You don't own that much, in the grand scheme of things. Most of the things in the house are Rewind's. You pack up your clothes into a trash bag and put it in the bin outside. You get a cardboard box and go around collecting your books and the leftovers from college you bothered keeping. The diploma you left in the closet. Your shampoo in the bathroom, your phone charger by the bed, the pictures of the two of you Rewind put on the wall. </p><p>You've had three serious boyfriends before. Mach, Pivot, and Scattergun. They all ended the same way, because you are what you are, and when what you are inevitably became so much that you could <em> tell </em> they were getting ready to leave you, you beat them to the punch and you bailed first. Even thinking of them hurts and makes your ribs ache. You had to make Brainstorm throw away Mach's shampoo when you broke up because you couldn't go in the bathroom for two weeks knowing it was in there. You'll do your best to make this easy. You owe him that much.</p><p>You don't know how many days have passed when a nurse with blonde hair and a warm smile tells you Rewind is finally awake and stable and they're going to move him out of the ICU. </p><p>There's no words for the relief you feel as it washes over you, the tide rising over your head as you drown in slow motion. You thank her and immediately turn around and leave.</p><p>At the house you leave your phone and a note on the table in the kitchen with your house keys, and there's nothing else you need to do. Your stuff is gone, the house is clean, his insurance is taken care of, and he's awake. You just had to make it this far and you did. You're done.</p><p>You shut the front door behind you and release the breath you were holding as you sink into the mire, water in your lungs and blood in your belly, the black sludge of time filling your empty core with peaceful numbing resignation. </p>
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